Question about cardio training

It depends what your target heart rate is too. Are you going for an anaerobic workout or just aerobic? a good idea for aerobic workouts would be low resistance/long duration, and anaerobic work would be more high resistance/short duration. Aerobic work will help lung capacity, heart strength etc. You won't see musculature gains in terms of mass, but you will lean out more. Anaerobic work and high load work (they go hand in hand) will give you your mass. Also, I highly recommend learning how to use a rowing machine if your gym has one. You can get great aerobic/anaerobic workouts on them, and they work your entire body at once vs. just the legs (as with a bike). I am biased towards them because I have been an oarsman for the last 4 years, but the quality of the workout given by a rowing machine is unequalled by any other machine in the gym.

First post...might be a troll....but who knows. If by workout you mean purely the ability of your heart to perform, then yes, it should be exactly the same from a pure cardiorespiratory standpoint. However, your heart rate is only related to the amount of oxygen that is required by your body to do a certain activity. I was at 9,000 feet last week and my resting heart rate was around 95 as opposed to the 60 or so I have at sea level so my heart was working harder due to the reduced amount of oxygen that was available in the air. Of course, things changed after a few days when my hemoglobin levels increased, but you get the point. Change something so that heart has do adapt and it will in theory. That said, heart rate will does not necessarily correlate with the muscular gains that are going to be made with regards to strength. Generally, when one wants to build strength it is in the form of low rep high weight training. Doing any exercise above approximately 2 minutes will be an aerobic activity and be used for muscular endurance as opposed to strength. If you want to build some strength while using a bike then do intervals of some high resistance spinning for a short period of time. Couple articles because i don't feel like typing the stuff: http://strengthtraining.suite101.com...ing_and_cardio http://www.brianmac.co.uk/energy.htm See the second link to discuss the differences between aerobic and anaerobic. It doesn't have to do with your heart rate, just the duration of the exercise. Target heart rate is also just a made up value. First of all, gains or losses in mass are going to be determined by your diet, period. An increase in activity with a proportional increase in consumption will yield zero change in mass, maybe body composition if you play it right, but not mass. Secondly, heart strength can be increased through both aerobic and anaerobic training, it was one of the things I came across while writing a paper for a sports physiology class. No real internet access for two months.....so have fun tearing my post apart